Many organizations, both large and small, face challenges related to tracking and paying a large number of invoices that are received on an ongoing basis. Upon receipt of invoices for various goods and services, an accounts payable or other department has to make determinations such as whether the expenditure was authorized, whether there is an associated purchase order, or whether the invoice needs to be forwarded to an appropriate manager for approval. Additionally, many organizations receive invoices at many different locations further complicating the process of managing invoices.
Typically, invoice management is accomplished via manual or partially automated processes. These processes frequently rely on accounts payable personnel to make decisions such as which personnel should approve a particular invoice or which general ledger (“GL”) code should be associated with that invoice.
There are many disadvantages to current methods of tracking and managing received invoices. First, many of these manual or semi-manual processes rely on the knowledge of persons within the organization to determine if the correct person with the allowed dollar authorization has approved the invoice.
A second problem is that the data from invoices usually needs to be inputted into the organization's accounting or enterprise resource planning (“ERP”) system. If the invoices are managed manually or with a separate system, the data must be manually keyed into the accounting or ERP systems, or even worse, re-keyed after having been entered into a separate system for managing invoices.
A third problem is that there is often little or no record of who is presently reviewing a particular invoice and what steps the invoice is processed through from the time it was received until the time it was paid. This type of audit trail is important for responding to inquiries as to a particular invoice's status as well as for providing a historical record of which personnel approved and paid an invoice.
A fourth problem is that invoices of different formats can be difficult to manage. As more business processes become automated, the number of vendors offering electronic invoices is increasing. The format of these invoices will vary depending on the systems used to create them. Further complicating issues, many vendors will continue to provide traditional printed invoices for the foreseeable future. These varying formats can be difficult to manage or aggregate and frequently require the information to be manually entered into an accounting or ERP system after an invoice has been approved for payment.
A fifth problem is that the personnel required to approve invoices are not found in the same facilities. As organizations become more decentralized, it is common for personnel needed to approve invoices to not be in the same location as where the invoices are received and/or processed. Routing invoices to remote locations for approval can be difficult to manage. Frequently, the invoices are routed to remote personnel for approval via email or fax. The problem with these methods is that there is no means of tracking whether the recipient has viewed or acted upon the invoice, making determining the status of a particular invoice difficult, if not impossible.
A sixth problem is that organizations who elect to scan their invoices have limited means of supplying the scanned image files to the servicing organization. Common methods for transferring large number of large image files, such as email or FTP, are typically cumbersome and error prone.
What is desired is an automated invoice processing system that addresses at least some of the above problems.